Monday, June 13, 2005

Last Friday was Live105's BFD music festival. What a phenomenal day! We got there a bit late after a late lunch, just catching the sounds of Tegan & Sara as we approached the ampitheater. We spent a long time in the Sun enjoying Ash, Hot Hot Heat, the Kaiser Chiefs and many other small bands on the True Music Stage. My most annoying and disappointing act was The Bravery. They have one "hit" on the radio which is a completely different sound than the rest of their music. Appearing again at a Live105 event was the incredible rap sensation Lyric's Born, this time with a full live band and a more appreciative live audience - the resulting effect was an incredible 30 minutes of bliss. I was also most impressed with Sleater Kinney, though disappointed at their lack of a bassist (as a sometimes bass player, I have a softspot for people who can master the instrument)

After wandering out of the True Music stage area, we were checking out some booths and found a few reps from the Jerry Springer show, apparently running a contest for "be Jerry for a day". After a couple of beers, it seemed like a good idea to audition and sign my life away on the FIVE pages of disclosures. The audition was relatively easy for me, as I've done so much theater, but I was not as quick on my feet as normal at making up lyrics to songs (which is what we were asked to do). So... I instead started singing Violent Femme's Add It Up... and my audition was stopped. All the same, snippets of my audition may appear in commercials for Jerry Springer, as I also made fun of people from Indiana (where I am from).

The main stage was even better, although I was disappointed with Kasabian's low energy start, Jimmy Eat World stepped up and put on a great show. Things just improved from there, with one of my all time favorite bands, Social Distortion coming out and rocking HARD. I've been fans of these guys for more than 10 years, and they are just amazing live now as they were years ago. Amazing rifs, guitar solos in all the right places and great lyrics. Wow!

I thought Social Distortion's performance would be hard to beat, but Dave Grohl & the Foo Fighter's took it up a notch and did not disappoint. Full energy, full throttle, all the way. These guys rock harder in person than they do on any of their radio edits. Incredible! Dave Grohl even did a "jam session" which took him wandering through the pavilion, drinking other people's beers. Later, Dave mentioned they were going to do something they'd never done before, then put their drummer on the microphone. I first suspected that they were going to just swap instruments, since it's well known Grohl is an amazing drummer, but again Foo Fighter's surprised us. They brought out a very good friend to be a guest drummer: Stuart Copeland of the Police! Wow! They did "Next to You" and it was incredible. Copelands beats rocked just as hard as any of the punk bands I'd watched that day, yet he did it in such a subtle manner. A small flick of the wrist, barely perceptible, and the beats were hard and fast paced. Impressive!It will be hard for next year to top this. Wow!